I’m not even including things already announced that haven’t yet appeared on stores shelves, like the Samsung Galaxy WiFi 5.0 (which might never, given Apple’s legal actions against Samsung).

I’m also not including second-tier shit no one is interested in: Archos, Coby, Cruz, Pandigital. Those are just made for landfills, not people.

The Nokia N9 isn’t listed because Nokia is delusional and thinks Windows Phone has a future. Windows Phone will follow in the glorious successful footsteps of Microsft’s Kin phone (that is bitter sarcasm, if you don’t know) — and I won’t even list one of those. Waste of pixels.

When MeeGo was announced, that pair was on the wallpaper of the launcher. And that made me take notice because that’s a brilliant and appealing design. Finally, someone was doing something different and putting fun back into tech.

I went searching for more of them today and discovered they’re called MeeGons.

The N9 is an absolutely stunning device – sleek, minimal, with a curved glass front and no visible buttons. What was more shocking, however, was the software. Nokia’s MeeGo ‘Harmattan’, powering the new flagship, was not only good, it was as stunning as the hardware.

This is Nokia’s iPhone; the attention to detail and design ethos is really befitting a modern smartphone platform. The OS feels alive, with UI elements swooping gracefully under your finger, alerts and dialogues popping onscreen with a bounce. The software and hardware feels like it was designed from the ground up together as a seamless whole. Multitasking is performed by swiping a finger from any side across the curved glass screen; notifications from all your services (Facebook, Twitter, mail, etc) have a dedicated section on your homescreen. The design language and iconography is a breath of fresh air. Performance-wise the device screams, as everything is running as native code and the GPU controls everything onscreen (a la Core Animation on iOS).

If you haven’t been paying attention:

1) I hate Nokia
2) I have been gleeful over Nokia’s death spiral
3) Nokia’s N9 makes me eat all of my past words
4) They should keep MeeGo alive because Windows Phone will fail